Dinner Date and a Special Gift!

So, I don't normally post big photos of myself, but this was the one photo we took the night I got my new digital SLR!!!! Can you tell the difference in clarity between this photo and the previous ones?? :) Yah!! I've been wanting a better camera forever now and Julio decided to surprise me when we went to the North Hills area of Raleigh for dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Mura. We also got to stay overnight at the Renassaince hotel since Granny and Papi are visiting and stayed with the kids! He decided to get the camera as an early Christmas gift so that we could use the camera on our beach trip!

And Then Down to San Diego & Irvine!

So after visiting The Lukacs' for a week, we flew down to San Diego to visit Papa and Linda as well as Aunt Jan and Aunt Diana. We were in SD from Monday, Nov.1-Friday, Nov. 5th. Our plane arrived on Monday evening and so we went over to Diana's house to have dinner with her and Jan. We had some take-out from some Mexican place down the street. On Tuesday am, we headed over from our hotel to Papa and Linda's house in Carlsbad to visit. Then after lunch, Jan came over and we drove up to Orange County to the cemetery where Grandma Pat is buried. We bought some flowers to set by her head stone and hung out at the cemetery for a while. Then we drove back and had dinner at our hotel. The next morning we played at an awesome park by our hotel, found some lunch and then headed over to Papa and Linda's once more for the afternoon. It was great to spend some time with them! Then we drove up to Irvine to visit my friend Kristin and family!
We arrived at Kristin's on Wednesday evening and hung out for a little while before bed. The next morning we drove to the aquarium in Long Beach. Here we are in the above photo checking out the sea life in the hands on display in front of us!
We had a great time hanging out with Kristin for about 23 hours! She was so nice to have us to stay at her house even with two little new babies! What an amazing new mom she is! Here is a photo we had Ayden snap just before we had to head back down to San Diego. I am holding Kristin and Ryan's little 5 month old twins! Jason is on the right and Alyssa is on the left! Aren't they two cute little bundles!! I was so happy to finally meet them!
Here is a closer up photo of the babies and Ayden. :)

Family Visit and Jojo's Baptism!

The Saturday after we arrived, Grandma Jean, Aunt Kathy and Cousin Kim came out to visit us for the afternoon! We chatted and watched the kids run around and play like crazy and enjoyed some lunch too!

I was having fun playing patty cake or one of those types of games with Jojo! Kathy must have snapped this photo, good job Kathy!

Ahhhh...my godson and nephew!

And here we are at his baptism the very next morning on October 31st. In case you can't tell, Marcie is the one in the red dress holding Jojo and Julius is to the left of her in the black suit and I am to the left of him.

The Oakland Zoo and Hanging Out!

Gabriel and Marcie's 2nd to youngest, Benji sitting on a caterpillar! :)
Here is a cute photo of Lindsay's son Garrett and Gabriel checking out the otters!
Marcie and I thought it was so cute that the two 5 year old cousins were cuddling while watching The Wizard of Oz in the garage hang out room! :)
They both fell asleep one day on the way back from somewhere...pretty cute. We always sing that song to them from that old Nick at Nite show, "Cousins...identical cousins...they walk alike, they talk alike...!" They were born 3 weeks apart, but they actually are as different as can be! They love to hang out though! :)

Thanksgiving at the Beach - Granny's (Caryl's) Birthday!

Here we are in the kitchen making Caryl a special family recipe cake while Papi got her out of the house on a "long walk!" :)
Uncle Henry kept watch of them so that we knew how much time we had before they got back. The cake was supposed to be a surprise!
Cheese! :) Cutie!
We were headed out for the birthday outings when we discovered that our van had a nail one of the tires! Uhhg! So, we had to skip the outing to the Wrights Brothers Museum and go get the tire patched. While we were waiting for it to get fixed, we found a park to play at down the road! Here we are playing while we wait!
Such a big boy!

Thanksgiving at the Beach - Gorgeous Sunsets!

Papi captured this one with his camera one evening. Can you see the bird right below the sun - beautiful!
Here is the sun starting to set as we were sitting out by the shops on the pier.
Well, not sunset here, but a great shot of Granny and Papi by the beach!

Thanksgiving at the Beach - More Cute Pics!

I thought this photo was cute since Gabriel looks like he is preaching a sermon to the ocean or something! :)
Dad woke up for some lunch in the nice 60+ degree weather we had for about the first 3-4 days we were there!
Papi captured my little strawberry blond headed cutie!
This was the view from our back porch!
Just a photo of the boys over at the shops!

Thanksgiving at the Beach - Playing in the Sand!

On the first full day we were in Duck, it got to be about 60 degrees in late November! It was gorgeous! I took the kids down to the beach to play in the sand while Julio slept (since Gabriel got him up too much the night before). The boys had a great time making sand castles and fetching pails of water! Aside from the one photo Julio took on the night he gave me the camera, this was my first official time trying out the new camera and I was quite amazed at how clear the pics were!

Thanksgiving at the Beach - Just a Little Scenery!

This was posted on the outside of our beach house. All the houses are named. We thought maybe the owners have 7 children plus two adults? Who knows?
You can barely see it, but at about 12 noon on the second day, we spotted some dolphins swimming out off the shore!
This is a photo of the waterfront shops that we always visit while in Duck. They have some cute clothes and trinkets!

Thanksgiving at the Beach - Caryl's Surprise!!

We arrived in Duck, NC at about 6 pm on Saturday night, Nov. 20th. We got the kids to bed and started to relax for the evening at the beach house that Julio had rented for the week. We were all sitting down doing puzzles and email when someone was at the door. This was Caryl's reaction when she saw...
Aunt Judy and Uncle Henry come up the stairs from the front door!! This was her first surprise of the big 70th Birthday week! She had no idea that Aunt Judy and Uncle Henry (Caryl's sister and brother in law) were going to be with us at the beach for half the week. She had even mentioned about an hour before they arrived, "We could call Judy and see if they can come out here?!" We tried to play it off and say they couldn't make it. :)
Needless to say, Caryl was so happy! :)
The next morning, Papi and Caryl got up early and went on a sunrise walk on the beach. This was the view from their room! We were able to get a beach front house for the week, it was amazing!
I had to throw in a little pic of the morning routine with Granny, Gabriel and Ayden. :) When we are staying with or having Caryl and Papi to stay with us, Gabriel loves to go into their room and wake Granny up and ask for "Oatmeal, Granny?" They have their routine of making the oatmeal and Gabriel is in heaven! They consume more oatmeal when Granny and Papi are around then they do most of the year! :)

Trip to Cali!

So we decided to that I would take the kids out to CA to visit family/friends during Ayden's second track out this Kindergarten school year since we are not going to travel for Christmas this year. We went to the Bay Area from Tuesday, Oct.26th-Monday, Nov.1st. On Wednesday, the 27th, my mom, my sister and all her boys and I met up with my good friend Lindsay and her son Garett at the Oakland Zoo. It was a gloomy day, but it didn't rain much while we were there, so we found a little amusement park outside the zoo and the kids road on the ride in the pic above. Ayden was also thoroughly excited because he just barely met the height requirement to be able to ride the roller coaster all by himself! I believe it was 48 inches...he is getting so tall and big!
Here are 'most' of the boys...we couldn't convince Benji and Garett to come over for the photo!
They are all checking out some alligators...can you see them through the glass?
Here are Gabriel and Garett on a spider!
My little bug!

Halloween at The Lukacs'!

Scooby Dooby Doo!!! So, because of his love for Scooby shows...here is the two year old Scooby all dressed up for Halloween!
Ninja Ayden and Scooby G outside of The Lukacs' house by the haunted house that Julius put together at the last minute...he did an awesome job for having only spent one day! The kids (especially Ayden!) love it!
Here is the whole gang! Our two plus Sam dressed as the scream guy from the movie, Jake as a ninja too and Jojo as Mickey Mouse! Benji was not dressed and crabby after a nap, so I just took the rest of the crew. They all had a fun time trick or treating in the neighborhood and hanging out to help gently scare folks who came through the haunted house!